


Three-hundred

by KyryeDuBarie



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Angst, Blood, Canon Typical Violence, Haikyuu Angst Week 2020, M/M, Or like a lil scene of how it would be, Sick me is even more of an evil person than normal me, This all happened because I got sick, Whipping, the untamed au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-01
Updated: 2020-11-01
Packaged: 2021-03-09 00:21:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,628
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27315451
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KyryeDuBarie/pseuds/KyryeDuBarie
Summary: Kei’s hand, slick with blood, slips.____________________________________________________________________________For Haikyuu Angst Week 2020, Day 1:When did it all change? A piece of The Untamed AU that haunts my dreams.
Relationships: Kuroo Tetsurou/Tsukishima Kei
Comments: 10
Kudos: 28
Collections: Haikyuu Angst Week 2020





	Three-hundred

**Author's Note:**

> Well, so, here we are. I think from the very first episode, I thought WWX was just how I'd envision a Wuxia Kuroo. LWJ as Tsukki just also felt right,, with a lttle tweaking, of course and.. here we are I guess.  
> Be mindful this might spoil you a bit. You'e been warned.  
> For anyone that has watched the show, you might recognize the kissing scene from the Phoenix Mountain hunt. It's the only piece I took form the novel cuz I love it. It goes the same as in the show except when WWX is wearing the blindfold LWJ kisses him and then runs away before he can see who it was. That's basically all the difference
> 
> Very Important TW// Major Character death. Canon Compliant. Violence.

The world shakes with the strike of Bokuto’s sword, the expansive wave strong enough to knock some of the surviving officers behind them off their feet.

Kei’s hand, slick with blood, slips.

It’s a fraction of a second, really, and for months, years after he will wonder if he imagined it, the way Kuroo’s eyes widened a little, how he seemed the slightest bit relieved. Not angered, not even mildly annoyed, the red skin at the rims of his eyes that matched so perfectly the blood escaping the side of his lips, almost crinkled in that beloved expression of amusement that Kei hasn’t been able to forget.

As if saying ‘Of course you won’t strike me directly, of course, with your personality Bokuto, who could expect anything different.’ As that ridiculous fringe at the top of his head billowed and flew and disappeared in the distance.

When he uselessly screams out “Kuroo!” Kei feels as if he’s peeled his throat raw.

.

.

The voice bounces around Kei’s head, echoes even though the words were never said, even though the actual last words he heard from Kuroo were a plea for him to let go, let him fall, down that abyss from which not even a hair, or a finger, or a bone could be recovered of him. What creature, which of the many darknesses that he consorted with in order to achieve his objectives, took him, Kei doesn’t know, likely never will.

In the end, he was right.

In the end, he couldn’t do a thing.

Warm hands, familiar ones, encircle him, wipe off the still flowing tears, guide him back like some sort of mindless mannequin, no more that the corpses Kuroo controlled on occasion. “We have to go home.” Akiteru says wanly, face pale with the weight of what will inevitably happen now.

Because it _is_ inevitable.

You don’t have a wall with more than three thousand rules carved in front of your ancestral home it breaking those rules didn’t bring some form of punishment.

On the way, the long way back, that Kuroo’s voice is still bouncing around his head. It says many other things now, not just about Bokuto. It clamors for Kei to be his friend, it instigates him to break his clan’s rules, preciously kept, lovingly held to his chest his whole life, branded into him by the cold almost-cruelty of ascetics and fanatics. It calls ‘Firefly’ over and over again, even as Kei walks a step in front of Akiteru, one by one, up the steps of Cloud Recesses. It’s like Kuroo is prancing about in circles around him, as he once did, as he should be doing.

“How useless.” Kei mutters, and there are no tears in his eyes but there might well be for the restrained, painful-sounding gasp that Akiteru makes behind him. After all, this is the first, the only thing he has said since Akiteru stopped him frantically looking for a ghost that wasn’t there and took him away from the Nightless City.

He knows, if his brother could he’d spare him. Righteously mad as he is, Kei’s walking into a veritable torture session and Akiteru could never see him struck. But there’s no other choice, the Clan can’t look weak, and if they do not punish their own someone might take that upon themselves. Whatever else, this is him being protected, however cruel being whipped like some animal may sound, Kei tried to ad the most hated man in this world, everyone’s enemy.

It doesn’t matter that his help came too late, that it was too little.

Anyone with eyes and a whit of intelligence knows that if Kei had been able to hold onto that hand he wold have hopped on to his sword and made off, perhaps never to be found again.

Perhaps to come back after giving Kuroo a proper place to rest.

From the moment Kuroo first came back, from that very day Kei saw the gory truth of how cruel those crinkled eyes and that crooked smile could look, he knew the path of darkness Kuroo had begun would at some point be his downfall. And perhaps Kei’s, it may have been easier if things had played out that way. Maybe if he simply hadn’t let go, maybe if he had held onto that hand in a different way. Kuroo’s fate was decided anyway, it was tangible when their hands met and Kei momentarily held him in mid-air, stopped him from falling over the precipice.

When he could feel that hand in his, Kei cared not at all that Kuroo raised corpses or whatever else, he didn’t bother himself with the worlds opinion of him, or them. After all, Kuroo is sill in his mind, a Snapshot of him grinning, hands on his hips, looking like the only thing Kei could never have.

His punishment is to be carried out on the walkway outside of the main hall. It’s the same as any other in the Cloud Recesses, except for the member’s private chambers, he can see, from here, the lengths of white gauze billowing in the gentle breeze that sweeps one or other stray leave over the starkly contrasting dark flooring. Around him, all the disciple’s he’s trained with, taught to, are also in stark white, their faces ashen almost to the point of making them appear monochrome. Kei grew up here, he barely knew the outside until a couple of yeas ago, the cleanly white of Cloud Recesses has been his only known home, and yet… and yet… oh, how he loathes white right now.

In the middle of it, there’s nothing, in other punishments, Kei has seen a dark wood table, meant, of course, for people to lean over on their elbows the moment their strength fails them. Most people pass out after no more than ten slashes from the disciple whip, and the strong ones, sometimes last for thirty.

The clan elders, on the other side of the table open their mouths, they speak, voices aggravated, lilting, scolding. Kei hears none of it, none of it matters. How funny that this is his first reprimand and he already knows what they are saying by heart, he is supposed to be a role model, one half of a perfect piece of jade, and yet he’s cracked, succumbed to evil and only gods know which other blasphemous proclivities.

Gods be damned, Kei wishes he’d succumbed into something, anything, he wishes he’d even had the chance.

He wishes he weren’t this pathetic thing that would not have done things any different.

But different would only have been worse, after all, if he damned the consequences for someone whose feelings couldn’t be more different to Kei’s than earth from heaven, what madness would he not have incurred in had there been a crumb of reciprocity in their long acquaintance?

“…three hundred slashes of the disciple whip.” The words barely startle him, if only because he has never heard of a number so high. Akiteru’s shoulders stiffen, his hand brushes over Kei’s wrist, under his sleeve, it’s all they can get away with.

Despite his famous poker face, despite his renowned biting temper and cutting tongue, Kei feels fear like anyone else. Or he used to, somehow, three hundred seems like an incomprehensible concept right now, three hundred is the blood that let his hand slip, the rumbling of Bokuto’s sword, the innominable distance between Kuroo and him.

It’s nothing, it’s everything, just like Kei.

Akiteru falls into a bow, his forehead touches the ground. “I bid you, elders, please,” he calls, and only now does Kei feel shame, only now does he regret. But just for Akiteru, the others have no idea, and he owes them no regret. “I have let m brother go astray, I am just as guilty. I plead. Let me share in his punishment-”

The head elders voice cuts sharper than the whip in his hand. “No.”

“Plea-” Akiteru starts, but has no time to finish as Kei stalks forward, his outer layer slipping off his shoulder with the soft rustling of expensive fabric. One of the disciples behind them rushes to gather it in his arms.

He’s left in his inner layer, cold seeping in quickly. “I’m ready.” His eyes rise from the wooden polish of the planks under him as Kei drops to his knees. “I accept my punishment, Head Elder, you are too kind.” Akiteru has nothing to do with all this, the pain is Kei’s alone.

“I was not finished.” The elder strokes his beard, severity every inch of his being. “You will also be confined to the back mountains, only permitted to reflect in the cold spring, for as long as it takes for you to heal, or as long as we deem it necessary.”

The cold spring, the cave, Kei is sure the Tsukishima Elders are not doing it with that in mind, they are incapable of such creative punishments. None of them would delve deep enough to decide to convince him to the place that holds most of his memories with Kuroo in this place. It is just his luck. He bows again trying not to let the iron of the situation show in his face. “You are wise.” He says simply, urging not only the elders but the world along.

There are no more words said, not even gloating, every last on of the elders once praised Kei, they find no more joy in this than him.

And Akiteru, Akiteru will suffer every strike like it was etched in his own flesh.

Kei didn’t have to come back. Even now, he could even leave, but where to?If only for Kuroo’s sake, Bokuto might take him, misery does love company and Bokuto has more misery than even Kei, he has barely anything left that isn’t ashes. So if he left… Wouldn’t the outside world just be worse? Would every bottle of liquor, every peal of rambunctious laughter he heard remind him of Kuroo? At least here, even though there are other memories, those were going to hunt Kei anyways. But the only person he ever truly considered traveling beside to really know the world and not just whatever battlefield they’ve been dragged to this time, isn’t even ashes, hasn’t even a grave marker, this will not get better even if he goes, so he might as well remain.

He moves his hair out of the way.

_‘Firefly’_

A strike lands. Kei holds firm, his eyes are already focused on nothing at all.

_‘It’s a nice name for you’_

Another, another, both blunt and biting, the elder does not have a soft swing, or a soft grip, or anything of the sort.

_‘I’m always this nice’_

Tenth, thirtieth, he can feel liquid warmth running down his back, staining the white of his robe, cooling in the frigid wind. His hands grip his knees, teeth grit until it feels like they will crack and splinter.

It smells like iron and warmth, it smells like _him_.

_‘Now, c’mon Young Master Kei, don’t be so uptight’_

He might be this cold in the cave too, probably will be, his headband burns perhaps it’s the last thing Kei owns that _he_ ever touched. Not knowing the meaning, willfully ignorant. He almost wants to laugh, for someone so smart, someone who was known for his guile, Kuroo could be obfuscating oblivious.

_‘What’s the name of that song?’_

The elder barks something at him, Kei’s mouth moves. It’s reflex, he has no idea what he says, something ingrained deep in his psyche probably, rules, scores, the feeling strings under his fingers, Kuroo’s raspy, barely there awe while asking for the song.

_‘I know my temperament, truly, it will be alright.”_

Burning pain, revived every time, every strike, tongues of fire liking from his sacrum to the base of his neck. At some point his eyes unfocus fully, at some point he stops knowing and thinking of numbers he might be at. At some point he feels the headband slip on his clammy forehead until it’s crooked and he remembers pulling the tails of it back against the bark of a tree and the burning of a mouth against his for perhaps the first and the last time. He remembers twitching hands that turned unresisting the press of the wooden flute against his hip.

All gone now, all burned and scattered in the void.

Kuroo’s warmth is a dream, a distant mirage which fidelity to the real thing Kei will always doubt but never resent.

It’s all he got, all he will get.

_‘Thank you’_

The whip sings.

_‘Tsukki, let go of me’_

No one dares touch him when the strikes stop, for a second Kei wonders if he’s dying, if somehow they ll know that he is beyond helping, that he was even before he stepped one foot back on the mountain. Three hundred, three hundred, three hundred. Maybe it’s all too much for one person, maybe he never let go and he’s only just waiting to catch up.

But then, the Elders’ legs disappear from in front of him, their boots soundless as they step away, and Akiteru’s hands reach him, try and prop him up.

Unconsciously, his hand reaches out. A strange, involuntary gurgling escaping his mouth from the place where a thin, bitter line of blood is dripping down his chin. His sword comes flying and Kei leans his weight on it, almost uncaring, almost unaware of Akiteru and the way his eyes widen incredulously as he tries to help the stubborn dregs of his younger brother is that he wont hit the floor if or when he passes out from the blood loss, or the shock of the beating, or both. “When did it get this far?” he hears his brother mutter, bitter regret in his voice. “When did it become like this? When did things between you and him change so much?”

And Kei wants to say that it started with Kuroo being reviled for being cleverer than others could ever dream of, that it started with him being kinder than any of those posing and pimping Young Masters with silver blood in their veins. He wants to say the flute, or the death of Bokuto’s parents. Or maybe the caves, both of them.

He actually does almost say ‘since he smiled at me from the other side of the wall in this place that very first night’, but all he hears leave his throat before the world at large goes blissfully dark is “That fool…stubborn… never listens.. I just wanted-” Akiteru’s face is blurry, it’s also definitely wet. “-tried to sa-”

.

.

The lanterns go up, and Kei lets himself be swallowed by the cold cave.

For the longest time walking around alone, bathing on his own, were out of the question. He’s a little past it now. Or barely, really, because the lanterns are those rough, calloused fingers stained with ink and an excited smug voice passing the fragile paper to Kei so he could see the crow Kuroo had drawn on the lantern for him.

At least he’s more used to the memories in the cave, and no one can look upon him here. And the healing properties of the freezing water are no joke, at least, the faster he becomes able to move freely, the faster he can build the cenotaph.

Still, his back throbs as he rises and heads for the instrument atop the pedestal, suppressing the shivers that threaten to wrack up his body, throwing the wet lengths of his hair over a shoulder as he straightens his back.

This is what it is, this is what is left. Kei’s fingers start playing that song again.

**Author's Note:**

> I think this is the most angst I've ever crammed into something so short. Oh, lord.  
> Thanks for reading, I'd love to know what you thought.
> 
> Love :3 :3 Kyrye


End file.
